Pushing Back Against Common Cause and Democracy NC

February 15, 2016

[This speech was given extemporaneously, only with the aid of a few talking points. I didn’t record it and do not have an exact copy of the words that came out of my mouth. That said, a friend encouraged me to piece it together as best I could and send him a copy. Below is my intent to meet his request. Caveat: It’s not 100% accurate. If a recording of today’s speeches ever emerges, I’ll adjust the wording to be more accurate, but for now… this reflects what I intended to say to this statewide forum. It was a video teleconference with public comments from the Outer Banks, Halifax County, Winston-Salem, Wilmington, Asheville and Raleigh. Legislators call for this extraordinary hearing after a Fourth US District 3-judge panel announced that NC had to redraw their Congressional districts right now. . . less than 30 days before Election Day. ]

Feb 15, 2016–RALEIGH–First, Sen Rucho and Rep Lewis, congratulations on your hard work to get these district lines drawn such that they passed Department of Justice preclearance. And congratulations for organizing these statewide meetings on such short notice. And your IT staff deserves a lot of credit for probably working all weekend to make this statewide public hearing even possible.

I’m Jay DeLancy, of the Voter Integrity Project, a non-partisan organization that loves our US Constitution.

And that’s what’s in play today.

The urgency of these hearings smells like a cynical judicial joke on North Carolina.

Never mind that tens of thousands of ballots have already been mailed out.

Never mind that the Board of Elections has already received something like 7,000 back from the voters.

And never mind that this election is underway. It’s already in progress.

Three activist judges want chaos in North Carolina’s March elections and that seems to be the priority.

Contrary to earlier rants we heard today, this chaos is NOT your fault. [Pointing to Sen Rucho and Rep Lewis] It’s the fault of sore losers.

It was no problem when Democrat gerrymandering gave them one-party control of North Carolina for more than 100 years.

They had no problem in the 1990s, when the Democrat-controlled Legislature created the “clown-shoe” district that gave us two “minority-majority” voter districts in North Carolina.

They had no problem in the year 2000, when Democrats again gerrymandered to keep those odd-shaped districts and maintain their grip on power in this state.

No. It only became a problem when, in 2010, despite all of the Democrat rigging of the system, the voice of freedom could not be suppressed any longer and the Republicans gained control of North Carolina’s government for the first time in more than 100 years.

NOW it’s a problem!

NOW, we see activist groups like Common Cause and Democracy NC using this crisis to launch a propaganda push for “non-partisan” redistricting commissions.

Please don’t drink that Kool aid.

You see, we do not have gods living among us.

Just as there are no unicorns, there are also no truly informed citizens who are truly non-partisan.

Our founding fathers understood this problem comes down to the sinful nature of man and they built a system to help protect us.

They crafted our Constitution with enough transparency that competing factions could hold the other side accountable.

To the extent that we deviate from our Constitution, we move further away from such citizen oversight and involvement.